he flag was white save
for a square of red in the centre. And this toy began to wig-wag
wag-wig, and it spoke to General Richie under the authority of the
captain of the battery. It said: "The 88th are being driven on my centre
and right."

Now, when the Kicking Twelfth had left Spitzbergen there was an average
of six signalmen in each company. A proportion of these signallers had
been destroyed in the first engagement, but enough remained so that the
Kicking Twelfth read, as a unit, the news of the 88th. The word ran
quickly. "The 88th are being driven on my centre and right."

Richie rode to where Colonel Sponge sat aloft on his big horse, and a
moment later a cry ran along the column: "Kim up, the Kickers." A large
number of the men were already in the road, hitching and twisting at
their belts and packs. The Kickers moved forward.

They deployed and passed in a straggling line through the battery, and
to the left and right of it. The gunners called out to them carefully,
telling them not to be afraid.

The scene before them was startling. They were facing a country cut up
by many steep-sided ravines, and over the resultant hills were
retreating little squads of the 88th. The Twelfth laughed in its
exultation. The men could now tell by the volume of fire that the 88th
were retreating for reasons which were not sufficiently expressed in the
noise of the Rostina shooting. Held together by the bugle, the Kickers
swarmed up the first hill and laid on the crest. Parties of the 88th
went through their lines, and the Twelfth told them coarsely its several
opinions. The sights were clicked up to 600 yards, and, with a crashing
volley, the regiment entered its second battle.

A thousand yards away on the right the cavalry and a regiment of
infantry were creeping onward. Sponge decided not to be backward, and
the bugle told the Twelfth to go ahead once more. The Twelfth charged,
followed by a rabble of rallied men of the 88th, who were crying aloud
that it had been all a mistake.

A charge in these days is not a running match. Those splendid pictures
of levelled bayonets, dashing at headlong pace towards the closed ranks
of the enemy are absurd as soon as they are mistaken for the actuality
of the present. In these days charges are likely to cover at least the
half of a mile, and to go at the pace exhibited in the pictures a man
would be obliged to have a little steam engine inside of him.

The charge of the Kicking Tw